Perhaps some paid internships are non-conventional (ie. working a help desk, or as a low-level IT worker, or as a simple tag-along on a team), but I'll argue against all paid internships being non-conventional. In my experience, paid internships can be perfectly on-par with a "conventional" job, acting as a short-term but equal-responsibility member of a team with full-time engineers and mentors.

In many cases, a paid internship basically equivalent to an entry level "conventional" position in many cases. Add to that the fact that if you do more internships, you can use your resume to earn more responsibilities and involvement at future internships.

I've held a number of internships, co-op positions, and ongoing in-field part-time W2 work (not counting odd jobs I do under the heading of contractor / self-employment), and I consider all of this experience to be both "conventional" and relevant. Accordingly, as a 22-year-old undergraduate student, I fall into the 10-15 category.

Agreed, if the internship(s) the great-grandparent mentioned were in engineering or any tech-related application. I've yet to see a worthwhile internship or co-op job in that area suggest working for anything close to minimum wage, much less for free. There are just too many good companies offering excellent opportunities that pay competitive rates that double, triple, or quadruple minimum wage rates. Now, if you're looking at a non-technical internship (ie. for something involving liberal arts, secretarial activities, etc), you should be willing to work for free, and pay for your living expenses out of your own pocket. This also goes for "internships" designed for people with zero technical experience trying to get something very low-level on their resume to introduce them to a tech career (ie. working as a generic "intern" at a company but having someone teach you to write webpages when you're not filing papers or fetching coffee) All of that said, this is my own experience and the experience shared with me by friends in many fields other than engineering/tech -- YMMV.

NCSU provides help-desk support for Linux clients, and all Freshmen are required to pass (or test-out of) a class that covers basic competency of a Linux/Unix environment. No problems here when using the required online resources or connecting to the wired or wireless networks. Additionally, the university has deployed a mix of Windows, Mac, and Linux machines throughout campus (albeit with a dominance of Windows).